by Jeff Gluck, USA TODAY Sports

by Jeff Gluck, USA TODAY Sports

CONCORD, N.C. - Carl Edwards' team gave Dick Trickle one last ride by putting the late driver's name above his door on Friday.

Together, Edwards and Trickle will start on the pole position for Saturday night's NASCAR Sprint All-Star Race.

Edwards mastered the unconventional qualifying format - which requires drivers to make a four-tire pit stop in the midst of their three time trial laps - better than anyone else on Friday night and gave Trickle's fans something to smile about in a heartbreaking time.

Trickle, a short-track racing legend, took his own life Thursday afternoon in a cemetery 40 miles northwest of Charlotte.

With Trickle's name on Edwards car - above both the driver's side and passenger's side windows - Edwards used a fast pit stop to snag the pole with an overall time of 111.297 seconds.

"I didn't know if I deserved to have that name above my door," said Edwards, who added he once thought Trickle was "the toughest human being alive."

Edwards said Trickle was "a hero to over half the crew" because he has many crewmen who hail from the Midwest. In addition, crew chief Jimmy Fennig was Trickle's crew chief when the driver won NASCAR rookie of the year honors in 1989.

"Hopefully his family is doing as best they can," Edwards said. "Hopefully he's in a better place and we're honoring him by doing that."

This year, NASCAR removed the pit road speed limits for qualifying, which meant drivers screamed their way off Turn 4 and most of the way down pit road before trying to time their stop at precisely the right spot.

"To execute coming on pit road at 157 mph, it's pretty wild," Kurt Busch said. "It's like a step back in time to throw caution to the wind and let her rip."

Edwards entered pit road at 154 mph and stopped his car in the pit box at precisely the right spot. His overall time edged Busch and Biffle, who said "the hair was standing up on the back of my neck doing this."

Dale Earnhardt Jr. had the second-fastest time, but he had a five-second penalty for a loose lugnut which dropped him to 15th.

Some drivers, such as Jimmie Johnson, had some difficulty. Johnson slid through his pit box and also had a five-second penalty for a loose lugnut, which left him 18th out of 19 drivers. Kevin Harvick's time was disallowed altogether after he went over his pit box line and the crew changed his tires anyway.

Meanwhile, Martin Truex Jr. and Jamie McMurray will make up the front row for the preliminary Sprint Showdown race, in which the top two drivers and a fan vote winner transfer to the main event.